thedrifter
09-15-06, 06:55 AM
Pride heals a bitter memory
South Boston honors its Vietnam casualties
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | September 15, 2006
The new sod sits green and lush beneath a black granite marker, the understated centerpiece of a South Boston park where the backdrop includes a hulking power plant, storage tanks, and towering waterfront cranes.
It's a working-class view from M Street Park and a working-class patriotism that will be honored Sunday when South Boston's Vietnam veterans gather before that granite marker, dedicated a quarter-century ago, to remember 25 of their friends and relatives who died in that divisive war.
``I still remember these guys as they were when we joined the Marines together or played ball together," said Tom Lyons, 58, a Vietnam War veteran who organized a grass-roots effort to erect the memorial.
At the time of that effort, the war was still a bitter memory, and the veterans who fought in Vietnam often aroused more suspicion than sympathy. But Lyons and a few comrades-in-arms, determined that their dead friends not be forgotten, forged ahead to build what is believed to be one of the first Vietnam memorials in the country.
The veterans organized dances, put jars for donations on the counters of neighborhood businesses, and raised $38,000, which included a large grant from the city. The community embraced the idea, and the memorial was dedicated on Sept. 13, 1981, with a keynote speech by James Webb, a Vietnam veteran who later became secretary of the Navy under President Reagan.
The memorial, which predated the Vietnam monument in Washington by a year, is powerfully simple, with the 25 names and their respective military branches etched in stark lettering on the large rectangular marker. Fifteen Marines, nine Army soldiers , and one Air Force casualty are represented on the stone, which is ringed by an elegant iron fence. All but one were enlisted men, and nearly all of them fought and died in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, when US casualties were high.
On the front of the stone are the words: ``If you forget my death, then I died in vain."
That has not happened in South Boston, where the memorial is rededicated every year and where a large crowd is expected at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to pay tribute to the fallen. A memorial Mass, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino is expected to attend, will be said at 10:30 a.m. at St. Brigid Church on East Broadway.
The rededication also will honor the living: the hundreds of neighborhood men who played ball together, hung out on street corners together, and joined the military together during the Vietnam War.
``Very few, if any, of the guys from my corner went on to college," Lyons said of his teenage gang at O and Second streets. A logical alternative was military service, just as it had been for many of their brothers, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers.
Jerry Turner, 61, is another of the men from South Boston who went to war, a number that included former Boston police commissioner Paul Evans. But when Turner returned from Vietnam, the idea of a memorial to a war he was trying to put behind him seemed misguided. He recalled telling Lyons: ``I don't think that's necessary. I want to kind of forget about the situation."
But he eventually changed his mind and now looks back at the effort to build the memorial as ``one of the best things I ever did." Instead of trying to forget about the war, Turner said, he found pride in the sacrifices his neighbors had made. Turner channeled his energy into working with families of the casualties, helping with fund raising for the monument, and giving Vietnam veterans everywhere a reason to be proud.
To this day, Turner said, driving past the memorial still triggers an outpouring of emotion over long-ago friendships. ``I think everyone needs to shed a tear every once in a while," he said.
Dan Joyce, 55, expects the service to be emotional, as always. His older brother John, a soldier of 24, was killed in Vietnam on Feb. 24, 1969. Not a day passes, Joyce said, when he doesn't think of his brother, ``a big, strong, tough kid," who entered the Army after graduating from Boston Latin School and Boston State College. John Joyce's loss devastated the younger brother and prompted a huge turnout for the wake and funeral.
Now, Dan Joyce's son, Sean, is in the middle of Marine Corps basic training in Parris Island, S.C. The new Marine was given his Irish name for the Uncle John he never met, but he enlisted for the same reasons John Joyce did.
``It was a sense of duty," recalled Dan Joyce, who lives in Quincy and is a parole supervisor for the state. ``Sean said, `If there's a war going on, who am I to sit at home?' "
Marine Corps flags and paraphernalia are placed throughout the Joyce home, although Dan Joyce served in the Coast Guard reserve and his father was a World War II Navy veteran. But his son's choice of the Marines follows the path that many of South Boston's young men took to Vietnam.
``Whether it was watching all those John Wayne movies, I don't know," Lyons said, laughing. What he does know, he added, is that the neighborhood, then and now, possesses an intense patriotism, even if the reasons for fighting a war so far away were not always clear to South Boston's Vietnam warriors. Lyons did not want to make comparisons to the current conflict.
``We really didn't understand the whole notion of why we were in Vietnam," Lyons said. ``We ended up fighting for ourselves and each other."
Lyons lives in Wakefield now; Turner lives in Weymouth. But their thoughts are never far from South Boston. And on Sunday, they'll also be focused on a war they can't -- and won't -- forget.
Ellie
South Boston honors its Vietnam casualties
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | September 15, 2006
The new sod sits green and lush beneath a black granite marker, the understated centerpiece of a South Boston park where the backdrop includes a hulking power plant, storage tanks, and towering waterfront cranes.
It's a working-class view from M Street Park and a working-class patriotism that will be honored Sunday when South Boston's Vietnam veterans gather before that granite marker, dedicated a quarter-century ago, to remember 25 of their friends and relatives who died in that divisive war.
``I still remember these guys as they were when we joined the Marines together or played ball together," said Tom Lyons, 58, a Vietnam War veteran who organized a grass-roots effort to erect the memorial.
At the time of that effort, the war was still a bitter memory, and the veterans who fought in Vietnam often aroused more suspicion than sympathy. But Lyons and a few comrades-in-arms, determined that their dead friends not be forgotten, forged ahead to build what is believed to be one of the first Vietnam memorials in the country.
The veterans organized dances, put jars for donations on the counters of neighborhood businesses, and raised $38,000, which included a large grant from the city. The community embraced the idea, and the memorial was dedicated on Sept. 13, 1981, with a keynote speech by James Webb, a Vietnam veteran who later became secretary of the Navy under President Reagan.
The memorial, which predated the Vietnam monument in Washington by a year, is powerfully simple, with the 25 names and their respective military branches etched in stark lettering on the large rectangular marker. Fifteen Marines, nine Army soldiers , and one Air Force casualty are represented on the stone, which is ringed by an elegant iron fence. All but one were enlisted men, and nearly all of them fought and died in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, when US casualties were high.
On the front of the stone are the words: ``If you forget my death, then I died in vain."
That has not happened in South Boston, where the memorial is rededicated every year and where a large crowd is expected at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to pay tribute to the fallen. A memorial Mass, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino is expected to attend, will be said at 10:30 a.m. at St. Brigid Church on East Broadway.
The rededication also will honor the living: the hundreds of neighborhood men who played ball together, hung out on street corners together, and joined the military together during the Vietnam War.
``Very few, if any, of the guys from my corner went on to college," Lyons said of his teenage gang at O and Second streets. A logical alternative was military service, just as it had been for many of their brothers, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers.
Jerry Turner, 61, is another of the men from South Boston who went to war, a number that included former Boston police commissioner Paul Evans. But when Turner returned from Vietnam, the idea of a memorial to a war he was trying to put behind him seemed misguided. He recalled telling Lyons: ``I don't think that's necessary. I want to kind of forget about the situation."
But he eventually changed his mind and now looks back at the effort to build the memorial as ``one of the best things I ever did." Instead of trying to forget about the war, Turner said, he found pride in the sacrifices his neighbors had made. Turner channeled his energy into working with families of the casualties, helping with fund raising for the monument, and giving Vietnam veterans everywhere a reason to be proud.
To this day, Turner said, driving past the memorial still triggers an outpouring of emotion over long-ago friendships. ``I think everyone needs to shed a tear every once in a while," he said.
Dan Joyce, 55, expects the service to be emotional, as always. His older brother John, a soldier of 24, was killed in Vietnam on Feb. 24, 1969. Not a day passes, Joyce said, when he doesn't think of his brother, ``a big, strong, tough kid," who entered the Army after graduating from Boston Latin School and Boston State College. John Joyce's loss devastated the younger brother and prompted a huge turnout for the wake and funeral.
Now, Dan Joyce's son, Sean, is in the middle of Marine Corps basic training in Parris Island, S.C. The new Marine was given his Irish name for the Uncle John he never met, but he enlisted for the same reasons John Joyce did.
``It was a sense of duty," recalled Dan Joyce, who lives in Quincy and is a parole supervisor for the state. ``Sean said, `If there's a war going on, who am I to sit at home?' "
Marine Corps flags and paraphernalia are placed throughout the Joyce home, although Dan Joyce served in the Coast Guard reserve and his father was a World War II Navy veteran. But his son's choice of the Marines follows the path that many of South Boston's young men took to Vietnam.
``Whether it was watching all those John Wayne movies, I don't know," Lyons said, laughing. What he does know, he added, is that the neighborhood, then and now, possesses an intense patriotism, even if the reasons for fighting a war so far away were not always clear to South Boston's Vietnam warriors. Lyons did not want to make comparisons to the current conflict.
``We really didn't understand the whole notion of why we were in Vietnam," Lyons said. ``We ended up fighting for ourselves and each other."
Lyons lives in Wakefield now; Turner lives in Weymouth. But their thoughts are never far from South Boston. And on Sunday, they'll also be focused on a war they can't -- and won't -- forget.
Ellie